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Joy finally understood the phrase: Praying to the porcelain goddess.
She hurled what was left of her stomach acids, and listened to the gagging in the next room from her loving, spiritual sisters who listened.
“Go make sure she’s okay,” Molli hissed at Beatrice.
“Uh, uh,” Tris answered. “I don’t do well with body fluids.”
“None of us do,” Virginia said. “But we need the experience if we want to be nurses. Go.”
“I’m rethinking that idea,” Tris mumbled. “So you go.”
Joy tuned them out for a few minutes while she brushed her teeth. She studied herself in the mirror. Her freckles stood out against the pallor of her milky white skin. Her lips looked plump and slightly reddened, but that could be from all the sin she’d just spewed from them. The wine cooler had definitely tasted better going down.
Her reddish-blonde hair hung straight and fine, losing the glorious, intricate curls it had the night before. Her face seemed oddly unbalanced. Something was off. Then she saw it.
Her stomach lurched and her eyes widened in horror.
She shrieked.
A clamoring of footsteps came pounding in rapid succession down the wooden hallway—for they all liked to wear stiletto heels indoors—and the door was thrust open, privacy be damned.
“My unibrow! It’s gone!” She wailed.
“What?!” Tris pressed her face to hers as if searching for it.
It made Joy shriek again.
“What?!” Tris screamed.
“Your unibrow! It’s hanging off your head like a dead caterpillar!”
It was true. Beatrice’s gentle, yellow roll was unraveled on one end and flapping in the wind.
“What’s happening to us?” Virginia screamed, pushing them out of the way so she could peer in the mirror. “Good God. My heart! It’s broken.”
Her carefully groomed unibrow, shaped into a delicate heart with two outstretched ribbons that curled around her eyes, was now mashed and mangled, with one of the outstretched ribbons cutting through like an arrow pierced it instead.
“Move!” Molli screeched, shoving Virginia aside. She peered into the mirror. “Oh. Awesome. My braid still looks good.”
“Why didn’t I pick the braid?” Virginia sobbed.
“Please,” Joy said to all the ding-a-ling twits. They may have been her sisters, but they were annoying simpletons sometimes. “Do you suppose you might keep it down? I’m the first one of us suffering from a hangover, you know.”
“Didn’t you just have one wine cooler?”
The girls all looked toward the voice. Lara, Marcie, Anita, and Diamond stood just inside the front entryway.
“Sorry,” Marcie said. “But the door was open. And we really need to talk to you. It’s an emergency.”
“Yes, I had a wine cooler. I was about to have the second one when someone nearly suffocated me with a bag over my head.” Though she glared at Virginia, Joy couldn’t help the proud tone in her voice. Bucket list. She was the first of the Puritans to try the sin of drink, and everyone knew it. “This is my first hangover, and I’d really like to enjoy it if the rest of you could all stop screeching so loudly.”
Lara laughed lightly. “Sorry to get you ladies up out of bed so early. But like Marcie said, this is really important. Come sit down.”
“Did you see our unibrows?” Virginia asked. “I’m not sure what happened.”
The unibrow was a symbolism of maturity on their home planet. It enabled the wearer to reach her right of passage into adulthood and was the first of their women’s rights. One of the few they had, and the most important. The right to choose a husband. Joy was sure they would have all had natural unibrows by now if they hadn’t been banished from the nourishing atmosphere of their own planet to the strange one of Hesprii.
Instead, they had to fake it.
“Well, we did tell you they may not last as long as Titi’s and Reese’s did, remember? The babies don’t wear makeup and lotions, and wash their faces daily...”
“Though we try,” Marcie cut in, glaring at Lara. “We’re just busy mothers, you know.”
“Anyway,” Lara continued. “The babies lost theirs during the kidnapping. So we may have guessed that you’d have yours a little longer, but we were mistaken.” It was one of their own, Sister Wilma Ann, who had gone insane and kidnapped the purple toddlers.
“Well, mine is fine,” Molli said proudly, waggling her braid for effect.
“Then you’ll have to hide indoors ‘til it falls off,” Lara said sternly.
“Ex-excuse me?”
“We want them off.” Lara leaned in. “The Mayor’s Council hired a special ops team of bounty hunters. Their mission is to either find you and return you to Quakestrarian by dragging each of you kicking and screaming, or...” She dramatically paused.
“Yes?” Virginia asked.
“Or he destroys you.”
“Destroys? What does that even mean?”
Lara shrugged. “The Quakers’ contract with the Freijian Council is explicit. Return the four of you, or destroy you all if you refused to return to your expected roles.”
“But...but, why would a stranger want us...dead?” Molli asked.
“It’s his job,” Lara explained. “He can’t refuse. It’s why we staged your kidnapping during the Supreme Commander’s reception, so no one would know you stayed here. But that means any young maiden walking around with a unibrow is automatically suspect. So, for now, you’re going to pretend to be human. That means ditch the brow. You’ll become our adorable cousins visiting from planet Earth.”
Stars and galaxies. The universe was making choices for her. Surely no one present could know that Joy’s greatest wish was to have been born human instead of Puritan. She sighed enviously. They were so lucky to dress how they wanted when they wanted. To marry the drool-worthy Freijians or to simply have dalliances. To have choices in their lives.
“Planet Dirt?” Molli asked.
“Urth.”
Blank looks followed Lara’s words.
“Earth. E. A. R. T. H.”
“Ee-aarth?” Joy asked.
Marcie snickered. “Perhaps they should have been cousins to the Freijians instead. None of them can pronounce it either.”
“Oh, but we’re not silver,” Virginia said. “We can’t possibly pretend to be their cousins.”
“You’re a true blonde, aren’t you, my dear?” Anita asked.
“Yes. I’m a natural blonde.”
“Bet you don’t even need to bleach your roots.” Anita reached over and grasped one end of Virginia’s heart unibrow...and ripped.
“Owwwwch!” Virginia screeched.
“There. You’re good to rejoin the planet’s festivities. But you can’t go by Virginia. How about Ginny? Ginny Ann?”
“I guess that’s c-close enough to my n-name that I’ll know who it is when I hear it called,” Virginia sobbed.
“Oh, come here,” Marcie said, pulling her blonde head onto her shoulder to cry it out. “Your forehead will just be red for a day or so. Like waxing.”
“A whole day?” Virginia shrieked, her head popping up. “How will I ever find a man when I’m so hideously ugly?”
Joy shook her head. Her simple sister had vanity in spades.
Marcie patted Virginia’s back. “There’s plenty of time for that when we get the bastard bounty hunter and his crew off the planet.”
“Bastards,” Molli said.
Joy gaped at her sister for voicing the unholy word.
Molli looked excited. “Our bucket list taped to the fridge. The sin of cursing. I was waiting for just the right moment to use it.”
“Ahem. Well, got that one under your belt,” Marcie said.
“Yeah, and you lay off the wine coolers,” Anita said with a grin to Joy. “Which, by the way, we should probably change your name to...Joy-see. Josie. We can call you Jo.”
“Oooh, who am I gonna be?” Molli asked.
“Mollificent?”
“That sounds elegant.”
“What about Beatrice?” Joy asked.
“I’m sure you don’t have a name for me. I can’t use Bee and I can’t use Tris,” she said sadly. “The Quakers called me Bee and I used Tris when I moved to this planet.”
“Then we’ll go with Trisha.”
“Well, that sounds like kind of a frou-frou name. And I’m more of the intellectual type.”
Joy fought the smile that almost hit at her sister’s indignation. “It’s only temporary. Until the bastards leave.” She chalked up a mental point onto her bucket list of sin since she’d offhandedly cursed, too.
“The good news is you’re young,” Marcie said to her. “Your hangover should go away once you get a little nutrition and hydration. I brought you a coconut from the Bubbled Waterfalls. We’re going to punch a hole in it so you can drink the water inside—”
“Will that get me pregnant?”
“Pardon me?” Marcie blinked, and the other human ladies stared.
“I-I know you all got p-pregnant with the silver babies from visiting the Bubbled Waterfalls. I think your baby is precious, and I love to help sit her, but I really don’t want one of my own. Maybe someday...but definitely not today.” Joy eyed the coconut warily. “So if there’s something in the water...”
“You can’t get pregnant from a coconut!” Anita snorted.
“Please!” Lara said to her sharply. “Pariah knew but...well, these girls are extremely virginal.”
Beatrice, Virginia, and Molli leaned in eagerly. Joy avoided everyone’s eyes since she could feel her freckles standing out with the heat in her cheeks.
“Um, well, remember those sex toys we showed you?” Lara spoke directly to Joy.
“Uh, huh?” Did she ever. They had been trying on cast-off clothes that the human women had stored in their closets, trying to re-create something for the ball when someone found out they had no sexual knowledge whatsoever. The sex toy education began by Marcie showing them images of severed male anatomy—some that moved, and some that held still. Various colors, sizes, and textures. Then it was discovered that Anita actually had one in her possession.
“Have you, um”—Lara cleared her throat—“used the one we replicated?”
“Yes,” Joy said, shyly. “Now that we have our own rooms and have some privacy.” She glared at her sisters, who all looked up at the ceiling.
“Oh, good.” Lara looked relieved. “That makes it much easier to explain—”
“Wait a minute,” Anita said, suspiciously. “Where did you use it?”
The other humans gasped.
“Ex-excuse me?” Joy said.
“Where?” she barked.
It made Joy so nervous, her mouth opened and the words vomited.
“I rubbed it on my neck. And the back of my shoulders.” The blush burned on her cheeks. “And the front of my shoulders. And...and...” Joy covered her face with her hands. “And I watched in the mirror as I did so!” she wailed. “It was so sexy!”
There was silence while she sobbed. She felt such shame with her perversion.
“Well, um, that’s perfectly normal,” Marcie said. “A lot of people are titillated by watching. But definitely, more sex lessons are in order. We kind of assumed you knew more than what we thought.”
“I’ll do it,” Anita said. “I’ll teach them all they need to know.”
“No,” Marcie and Lara said simultaneously, with narrowed eyes. “Maybe Jannie would be best.”
“Jannie would definitely be best,” Diamond snickered. “I’ll let her know.”
Anita sighed. “You’re opening up a can of worms with that one. I’m telling ya. It’d be best if I did it.”
“No,” Lara said again with a glare.
Anita shrugged.
Personally, Joy was glad they weren’t getting Anita. She was a short-tempered and crude human female.
“We need to get back. The guys are having a meeting today with the Commander before he and Pariah take off on the honeymoon. A new ship has descended with a crew of Freijians they’ll be introducing to us. We’ll talk to Jannie immediately, and it’s probably best if just one of you gets lessons from her and relays to the others. She’s trying to get pregnant and chases Chautles every chance she gets,” Marcie said. “I’d rather she scarred just one of you than all four.”
“It’s disgusting,” Anita said. “Sometimes you see more than you want to.”
The other humans snickered, though Joy didn’t quite understand what was funny.
“I’d like to be the one to go see her,” Joy said quietly.
“What about your hangover?”
“I think it’s clearing.”
Lara nodded. “Okay. Let’s have you all—minus Molli—meet outside the ship. The guys will be there after their meeting with the new Freijians. Might as well get it over with and introduce you as our just-landed human cousins. Then Joy can get on her way to Jannie’s house.”
“Come straight home, afterward,” Molli said wistfully. “I want to hear everything. Every single detail.”
